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Stuart Pearce blames England Under-21s for horrifying tournament

By on June 11, 2013

England Under-21 coach Stuart Pearce has refused to defend his squad for their horrifying showing at the European Under-21 Championship, which saw England depart the tournament bottom of Group A without gaining any points and losing all three of their matches.  Although Pearce had defended the squad over some of their previous losses, the former Manchester City manager has blamed the England players for their humiliating defeats to Italy, Norway, and Israel in the Group stage of the Championships.

“I’m not coming out here and defending anyone. I’m sick to the back teeth of doing that in this tournament,” Pearce said. “The standard we’ve set ourselves over a three-year period is a million miles away from what we’ve shown in this period. I honestly don’t believe I should be here answering questions on behalf of [the players].

Pearce is set to discuss his position as manager of the U21s at a meeting with the Club England management board next week, with the 51-year-old’s six year reign looking in serious jeopardy.  Despite leading the U21s to the final of the 2009 Championships and the 2007 semifinals, Pearce is facing the possibility of getting the sack after his side traveled back to England without scoring a goal in open play during 270 minutes of football in the tournament.

Although some of the players called up to represent the England U21’s cast the felling of not wanting to be there in the dressing room during the tournament, Pearce underlined a different reason for why the side did not perform well.

“Maybe there wasn’t enough talent here (among the squad),” Pearce said after tournament.

“The bottom line is the results were not good enough. We lost three games and we’ll get on a plane and reflect on how bad we were.

“This is the business end of the tournament and we got what we deserved.

“I don’t think we deserved to win a game. Credit to the Israelis, they deserved to beat us.

“If you don’t turn up and work hard enough in any given tournament, you won’t get any success and that was typical of today and probably the two games prior to it.

“The basics – holding possession of the ball, passing it and moving it, wanting to get into shape when the opposition have the ball – we’ve been really poor.”

About Alex Morgan

Alex Morgan, founder of Football Every Day, lives and breaths football from the West Coast of the United States in California. Aside from founding Football Every Day in January of 2013, Alex has also launched his own journalism career and hopes to help others do the same with FBED. He covers the San Jose Earthquakes as a beat reporter for QuakesTalk.com and his work has also been featured in the BBC's Match of the Day Magazine.